I'm sure there's lots to learn and improve. To be honest, I'm still using it on auto mostly. The blurry background doesn't seem so difficult, I'll work on this some more. I've also been photographing my triplets, the feral cats that show up at my kitchen window, wanting food:

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

This is going to be the weirdest blog post I've ever written, but I must share this amazing gift Lidl is making us German expats living in Ireland this week. And all others brave enough to try new and exciting food!

In Ireland, we have two large, popular German supermarket chains: Lidl and Aldi (while in Germany there's a bunch more shops like these). They have a large selection of food at a discounted price and I do my main shop at Lidl.

In the 9.75 years I've been living in Ireland they have never offered the German food I love: Spaetzle, Schupfnudeln, Nuernberger Wuerstchen, Leberkaese, Currywurst.

One gets used to this grave oversight in product supply. Sure, black pudding and bacon rashers are great comfort foods too. But as of this week, Lidl is actually offering the good stuff! All I've missed (and more), available in Lidl:

My flatmate and I have been stuffing our suitcases when coming back from Germany to bring back a few weeks' supply of Spaetzle ("Egg noodles"), Schupfnudeln ("Potatoe noodles"), Leberkaese ("Bavarian style mini meatloaf") etc.

To make it even better, it couldn't have come at a better time: We ran out of supplies from the Christmas break a little while ago and the next trip to Germany is 1 month (for her)/ 2 months (for me) away.

So this was the combined shopping, which should last us for a few weeks:

I'm very grateful to Lidl, you've made a bunch of German expats very happy this week! Let's hope it catches on and becomes a regular thing. These things don't necessarily have to become part of the product line, but once every 3-6 months would be amazing!

And then there's Aldi. Due to it's lack of freshly baked breads and pastries it's only my second favourite supermarket. But in keeping tabs on what Lidl is doing, they might do these German superfoods in a few weeks too.

Aldi's commercials are great here in Ireland, check out some of my favourites:

More great news: After stacking up all the food in the fridge, there's even a bit of space left, so we can go back to Lidl and buy some more Spaetzle tomorrow, because, you know, Every Lidl helps...

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Year 1: Within 5 minutes of hearing about Etsy, I opened my shop. I had one (badly-photographed) aran cardigan, beautiful and way too cheap! Later on I listed baby booties, leg warmers, socks and pillow cases that I knitted. I sold nothing for 4 months. Finally got some orders for pillow cases (with aran patterns, all kinds of colours and sizes), most were custom orders. Got into personalized Christmas stockings and sold a few around my first Etsy Christmas, way too cheap, although they weren't as good as they are now.

Year 2: Custom pillow cases took off! Had to go yarn shopping every week (yeah, such a chore), because everyone wanted a different colour and lots of yarn goes into them. I realized I wasn't charging enough but kept going. Around Christmas time again Christmas stockings were popular. I raised my prices. I offered more choices on colours and patterns. Sold more than I could make, ran out of time, customers had to wait a long time.

More colours, more patterns

Year 3: Found my niche: Personalized knitted Christmas stockings. I wasn't giving any discounts before Christmas. I stopped doing the pillow cases. I offered more choices for Christmas stockings: More patterns, more sizes, more colours, pure wool and acrylic yarn.

Popular Christmas Stockings

Year 4: My out of season discount was still quite high and I had a waiting list I was working on well into the time new orders started rolling in. I started creating knitting patterns. I changed my shop name to SantasSockCentral.

Lots of large stockings

Year 5: Last year. Out of season discount went down to 10% and I finished the waiting list by August. Success! I created more knitting patterns. Promoted on Instagram and Twitter. Started an email list of customers.